In Trap, by M.Night Shyamalan, a psychopathic killer/family man does everything he can to escape the trap orchestrated for him by multiple police. With a certain guilelessness (except for Josh Hartnett) the cast is largely appealing. Hartnett succeeds as the killer; Alison Pill is unerring as his wife. But the film doesn’t come off. Shyamalan is no writer. There is in Trap, as Ross Douthat indicates, a “ludicrous but memorable setup.” It is ludicrous, though.

Mrs. Ross, in the Bryan Forbes film The Whisperers (1967), is an elderly woman who lives alone and whose mind is leaving her. She is often ill-treated. Based on a novel by Robert Nicolson, this is another Sixties British piece about the working class, with concentration on human callousness.

The technical-artistic efforts of director Forbes and editor Anthony Harvey are estimable. So is Forbes’s scriptwriting except that the movie’s finish minimizes loneliness. The celebrated Dame Edith Evans is magnificent in the difficult part of Mrs. Ross. There is a persistent simple dignity in the intelligent portrayal here. As the husband who abandoned Mrs. Ross, Eric Portman is superlative.

All Your Faces (or, translated from the French, I Will Always See Your Faces, 2023) reflects the attention-paying of filmmaker Jeanne Henry to Western therapeutic culture. She uses French actors in the roles of crime victims and crime perpetrators who converse with each other in what is called a Restorative Justice project. Actors such as Elodie Bouchez play therapy professionals and volunteers for RJ, a social creation which in France does indeed exist. The purpose is, well, “healing,” although one character mentions that restorative-justice represents something that people in our time detest.

A victim named Chloe (Adele Exarchopoulos) could have easily detested it, but I don’t believe she does. Sexually molested as a child by her half-brother, Chloe agrees to meet with him. Counselor Judith (Bouchez) makes the mistake of mentioning forgiveness to Chloe, which angers her, and to be sure Chloe does not forgive her half-brother.

Faces is sometimes moving despite Henry’s personal detachment from the goings-on. She offers no view on the efficacy of the “dialogue.” Yet crime victims here do seem to need psychological healing; they are traumatized. Thefts have occurred (there are no murderers) and not without physical injury. The film is fascinating—not quite flawless but still very good. And although a contempt in many quarters for restorative-justice is inevitable, never do we feel contempt for any of Henry’s characters.

(In French with English subtitles)